I remember one of my first classes at Lexington Theological Seminary. I came mid-year. I was a little too self-assured—or maybe I was acting self-assured because I felt so nervous and insecure. But in my mind, I’d spent four years in undergraduate double majoring in Biblical Languages and New Testament, and I already had a masters degree in church history from another seminary.

I would have really annoyed me if I’d had a class with me. It’s kind of embarrassing now. I figured I knew more than just about everyone else in my classes.

Why did I think I was so much more advanced?

In my first class in New Testament Introduction, my professor, Sharyn Dowd, wrote Mark 8:14 on the board. She then proceeded to explain that Mark is one of the books in the New Testament, the 8 represents the chapter in Mark, and the 14 refers to the verse.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d known that since I was eating stale graham crackers and drinking watered down grape Kool-aid in Vacation Bible School. So, after class I asked her why she did that. She said, “Well, a number of these students studied biology or English in college and seminary is their first real exposure to the Bible.”

I was stunned. Why do you even go to seminary if that’s the extent of your Biblical knowledge? But I figured that if that’s where my fellow students were, this degree was going to be a piece of cake. In retrospect, I must have been insufferable to my classmates.

Shortly thereafter, I was in another class and we’d broken up into small groups to discuss a reading from Reinhold Niebuhr. I hadn’t read this particular book, but I thought I knew enough about Niebuhr to bluff my way past these Mark 8:14 students.

I started waxing eloquent about Niebuhr, when one guy, who later became one of my best friends, Kevin Phipps, said, “That’s not what this is about at all. Did you even read this book?”

I just sat there, my face turning red. Kevin looked around and rolled his eyes.

I suspect that eye-rolling must have gotten to be a familiar reflex for Jesus as the disciples demonstrated time after time that they hadn’t really read and therefore completely misunderstood the homework assignment.

“What do you want me to do for you?”

I imagine that Jesus had gotten tired of asking that question by this time. Jesus and the disciples had been “on the way” for quite some time. As soon as our passage for today concludes, Jesus will begin to make preparations for his entry into Jerusalem. Our text places us right before Palm Sunday and all the intensity of Holy Week.

But how did we get this far?

Well, Jesus and the disciples begin moving figuratively, if not immediately geographically, toward Jerusalem with all its ominous overtones. Jesus heals a blind man all the way back in chapter eight, the only healing in Mark where Jesus has trouble getting it right the first time. Jesus spits in his hands, puts his hands on the man’s eyes, and all the blind man sees after the first attempt are “trees walking” (v. 24). Then Jesus puts his hands over the man’s eyes again, “and his sight [is] restored” (v. 25).

Directly after this interesting encounter with the blind man in Bethsaida, Jesus and the disciples take off for Caesarea Philippi, “and on the way, he [asks] his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’” (v. 27).

“On the way,” of course, is a means of speaking about the inexorable journey to Jerusalem. The cross, therefore, is the lens through which Mark wants us to interpret what happens “on the way.”

That the journey to Jerusalem begins with the healing of a blind man, and ends with the healing of another blind man, Bartimaeus, isn’t accidental. These two rhetorical bookends act as a commentary on the disciples’ response to Jesus’ prediction of his own death.

What does that mean?

Well, take a look at both ends of this journey to Jerusalem. Back in chapter eight, just prior to the first healing of the blind man in Bethsaida, the disciples have witnessed the feeding of the four thousand, the second such miraculous feeding in a very short time (the feeding of the five thousand takes place just prior in chapter six).

After the feeding of the four thousand, Jesus and the disciples get into a boat, but “the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread” (8:14). Jesus begins speaking about “the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” And they think Jesus is talking about the fact that they’ve neglected to bring Twinkies for the boat ride. To which Jesus responds incredulously, “Why are y’all worried about bread? Didn’t you just see what I did with the five thousand and the four thousand? Were you just not paying attention? How do you not get this?”